One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit initiative established with the goal of transforming education for children around the world; this goal was to be achieved by creating and distributing educational devices for the developing world, and by creating software and content for those devices.

Its primary goal continues to be to transform education, by enabling children in low-income countries to have access to content, media and computer-programming environments. At the time that the program launched, the typical retail price for a laptop was considerably in excess of $1,000 (US), so it was infeasible to achieve this objective without also bringing a low-cost machine to production. This became the OLPC XO Laptop, a low-cost and low-power laptop computer. The project was originally funded by member organizations such as AMD, eBay, Google, Marvell Technology Group, News Corporation, Nortel. Chi Mei Corporation, Red Hat, and Quanta provided in-kind support.

The OLPC project has been the subject of extensive praise and criticism. It was praised for pioneering low-cost, low-power laptops and inspiring later variants such as Eee PCs and Chromebooks; for assuring consensus at ministerial level in many countries that computer literacy is a mainstream part of education; for creating interfaces that worked without literacy in any language, and particularly without literacy in English. It has been criticized from many sides regarding its US-centric focus that ignores bigger problems, high total costs that may actually even be quite cost-ineffective, low focus on maintainability and training and its limited success so far.

The OLPC program has its roots in the pedagogy of Seymour Papert, an approach known as constructionism, which espoused providing computers for children at early ages to enable full digital literacy. Papert, along with Nicholas Negroponte, were at the MIT Media Lab from its inception. Papert compared the old practice of putting computers in a computer lab to books chained to the walls in old libraries. Negroponte likened shared computers to shared pencils. However, this pattern seemed to be inevitable, given the then-high prices of computers (over $1,500 apiece for a typical laptop or small desktop by 2004).

In 2005, Negroponte spoke at the World Economic Forum, in Davos. In this talk he urged industry to solve the problem, to enable a $100 laptop, which would enable constructionist learning, would revolutionize education, and would bring the world's knowledge to all children. He brought a mock-up and was described as prowling the halls and corridors of Davos to whip up support.[1] Despite the reported skepticism of Bill Gates and others, Negroponte left Davos with committed interest from AMD, News Corp, and with strong indications of support from many other firms.
From the outset, it was clear that Negroponte thought that the key to reducing the cost of the laptop was to reduce the cost of the display. Thus, when, upon return from Davos, he met Mary Lou Jepsen, the display pioneer who was in early 2005 joining the MIT Media Lab faculty, the discussions turned quickly to display innovation to enable a low-cost laptop. Convinced that the project was now possible, Negroponte led the creation of the first corporation for this: the Hundred Dollar Laptop Corp.

In the first years of the project, the Association managed development and logistics, and the Foundation managed fundraising such as the Give One Get One campaign ("G1G1").

OLPC XO-1 original design proposal

Intel was a member of the association for a brief period in 2007. It resigned its membership on January 3, 2008, citing disagreements with requests from OLPC's founder, Nicholas Negroponte, for Intel to stop dumping their Classmate PCs.[3][4]

In 2008, Negroponte showed some doubt about the exclusive use of open-source software for the project,[5] and made suggestions supporting a move towards adding Windows XP, which Microsoft was in the process of porting over to the XO hardware.[6] Microsoft's Windows XP, however, is not seen by some as a sustainable operating system.[7] Microsoft announced that they would sell them Windows XP for $3 per XO.[8] It would be offered as an option on XO-1 laptops and possibly be able to dual boot alongside Linux.[9] In response, Walter Bender, who was the former President of Software and Content for the OLPC project, left OLPC[10][11] and founded Sugar Labs to continue development of the open source Sugar software which had been developed within OLPC. No significant deployments elected to purchase Windows licenses.

Advertisements for OLPC began streaming on the video streaming website Hulu and others in 2008. One such ad has John Lennon advertising for OLPC, with an unknown voice actor redubbing over Lennon's voice.[15]

In 2008 OLPC lost significant funding. Their annual budget was slashed from $12 million to $5 million which resulted in a restructuring on January 7, 2009. Development of the Sugar operating environment was moved entirely into the community, the Latin America support organization was spun out and staff reductions, including Jim Gettys, affected approximately 50% of the paid employees. The remaining 32 staff members also saw salary reductions.[16][17] Despite the downsizing, OLPC continued development of the XO-1.5 laptops.

In 2010, OLPC moved its headquarters to Miami. The Miami office currently oversees sales and support for the XO-1.5 laptop and its successors, including the XO Laptop version 4.0 and the OLPC Laptop.

Funding from Marvell, finalized in May 2010, revitalized the foundation and enabled the 1Q 2012 completion of the ARM-based XO-1.75 laptops and initial prototypes of the XO-3 tablets. OLPC is currently[when?] taking orders for mass production of the XO 4.0, and has shipped over 3 million XO Laptops to children around the world.[citation needed]

At the World Summit on the Information Society held by the United Nations in Tunisia from November 16–18, 2005, several African representatives, most notably Marthe Dansokho (a missionary of United Methodist Church), voiced suspicions towards the motives of the OLPC project and claimed that the project was using an overly "U.S. mindset", pointing out that the presented solutions were not applicable to specifically "African problems". Dansokho said the project demonstrated misplaced priorities, stating that African women would not have enough time to research new crops to grow. She added that clean water and schools were more important. Mohammed Diop specifically criticized the project as an attempt to exploit the governments of poor nations by making them pay for hundreds of millions of machines and the need of further investments into internet infrastructure.[18] Others have similarly criticized laptop deployments in very low income countries, regarding them as cost-ineffective when compared to far simpler measures such as deworming and other expenses on basic child health.[19]

Lee Felsenstein, a computer engineer who played a central role in the development of the personal computer, criticized the centralized, top-down design and distribution of the OLPC.[20]

The project originally aimed for a price of 100 US dollars. In May 2006, Negroponte told the Red Hat's annual user summit: "It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140."[21] A BBC news article in April 2010 indicated the price still remained above $200.[22]

In April 2011, the price remained above $209.[23] In 2013, more than 10% of the world population lived on less than US$2 per day.[24] The latter income segment would have to spend more than a quarter of its annual income to purchase a single laptop, while the global average of ICT spending is 3% of income.[25] Empirical studies show that the borderline between ICT as a necessity good and ICT as a luxury good is roughly around the "magical number" of US$10 per person per month, or US$120 per year.[25]

John Wood, founder of Room to Read (a NPO which builds schools and libraries), emphasizes affordability and scalability over high-tech solutions. While in favor of the One Laptop per Child initiative for providing education to children in the developing world at a cheaper rate, he has pointed out that a $2,000 library can serve 400 children, costing just $5 a child to bring access to a wide range of books in the local languages (such as Khmer or Nepali) and English; also, a $10,000 school can serve 400–500 children ($20–$25 a child). According to Wood, these are more appropriate solutions for education in the dense forests of Vietnam or rural Cambodia.[26]

The Scandinavian aid organization FAIR proposed setting up computer labs with recycled second-hand computers as a cheaper initial investment. Negroponte argued against this proposition, stating the expensive running cost of conventional laptops.[27]Computer Aid International doubted the OLPC sales strategy would succeed, citing the "untested" nature of its technology. CAI refurbishes computers and printers and sells them to developing countries for £42 a piece (compare it to £50 a piece for the OLPC laptops).[28]

The OLPC project has also been criticized for allegedly adopting a "one-shot" deployment approach with little or no technical support or teacher training, and for neglecting pilot programs and formal assessment of outcomes in favor of quick deployment. Some authors attribute this unconventional approach to the OLPC promoters' alleged focus on constructivist education and 'digital utopianism'.[19]Mark Warschauer, a Professor of University of California at Irvine and Morgan Ames, at the time of writing, a PhD candidate at Stanford University, have pointed out that the laptop by itself does not completely fill the need of students in underprivileged countries. The "children’s machines", as they have been called, have been deployed to several countries, for example Uruguay, Peru, and in the US, Alabama, but after a relatively short time, their usage has declined considerably, sometimes because of hardware problems or breakage, in some cases, as high as 27% to 59% within the first two years, and sometimes due to a lack of knowledge on the part of the users on how to take full advantage of the machine. However, another factor has recently been acknowledged; a lack of a direct relation to the pedagogy needed in the local context to be truly effective. Uruguay reports that only 21.5% of teachers use the laptop in the classroom on a daily basis, and 25% report using it less than once a week. In Alabama, 80.3% of students say they never or seldom use the computer for class work, and Peru, teachers report that in the first few months, 68.9% use the laptop three times per week, but after two months, only 40% report such usage. Those of a low socio-economic level tend to not be able to effectively use the laptop for educational purposes on their own, but with scaffolding and mentoring from teachers, the machine can become more useful. According to one of the returning OLPC executives, Walter Bender, the approach needs to be more holistic, combining technology with a prolonged community effort, teacher training and local educational efforts and insights.[29]

The organization has been accused of simply giving underprivileged children laptops and "walking away". Some critics claim this "drive-by" implementation model was the official strategy of the project. While the organisation has learning teams dedicated to support and working with teachers, Negroponte has said in response to this criticism that "You actually can" give children a connected laptop and walk away, noting experiences with self-guided learning.[30]

In 2009, OLPC announced an updated XO (dubbed XO-1.5) that takes advantage of the latest component technologies. The XO-1.5 includes a new VIAC7-M processor and a new chipset providing a 3D graphics engine and an HD video decoder. It has 1GB of RAM and built-in storage of 4 GB, with an option for 8 GB. The XO-1.5 uses the same display, and a network wireless interface with half the power dissipation.[34]

Early prototype versions of the hardware were available in June 2009, and they are available for software development and testing available for free through a developer's program.[35]

An XO-1.75 model was developed that used a Marvell ARM processor, targeting a price below $150 and date in 2011.[36]

The XO-2 two sheet design concept was canceled in favor of the one sheet XO-3.

An XO-3 concept resembled a tablet computer and was planned to have the inner workings of the XO 1.75.[37] Price goal is below $100 and date is 2012.[38]

As of May 2010, OLPC was working with Marvell on other unspecified future tablet designs.[39] In October 2010, both OLPC and Marvell signed an agreement granting OLPC $5.6 million to fund development of its XO-3 next generation tablet computer. The tablet was to use an ARM chip from Marvell.[40][41]

At CES 2012, OLPC showcased the XO-3 model, which featured a touchscreen and a modified form of SugarLabs "Sugar".[42] In early December 2012, however, it was announced that the XO-3 would not be seeing actual production, and focus had shifted to the XO-4.[43]

The XO-4 was launched at International CES 2013 in Las Vegas[44] The XO Laptop version 4 is available in two models: XO 4 and XO 4 Touch, with the latter providing multi-touch input on the display. The XO Laptop version 4 uses an ARM processor to provide high performance with low power consumption, while keeping the industrial design of the traditional XO Laptop.

The laptops include an anti-theft system which can, optionally, require each laptop to periodically make contact with a server to renew its cryptographic lease token. If the cryptographic lease expires before the server is contacted, the laptop will be locked until a new token is provided. The contact may be to a country-specific server over a network or to a local, school-level server that has been manually loaded with cryptographic "lease" tokens that enable a laptop to run for days or even months between contacts. Cryptographic lease tokens can be supplied on a USB flash drive for non-networked schools.[45] The mass production laptops are also tivoized, disallowing installation of additional software or replacement of the operating system. Users interested in development need to obtain the unlocking key separately (most developer laptops for Western users already come unlocked). It is claimed that locking prevents unintentional bricking and is part of the anti-theft system.[46]

In 2006, the OLPC project was heavily criticised over Red Hat's non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with Marvell concerning the wireless device in OLPC, especially in light of the OLPC project being positioned as an open-source friendly initiative. An open letter for documentation was inked by Theo de Raadt (a recipient of the 2004 Award for the Advancement of Free Software), and the initiative for open documentation has been supported by Richard Stallman, the President of the Free Software Foundation.[47] De Raadt later clarified that he finds an issue with OLPC having proprietary firmware files that are not allowed to be independently re-distributed (even in the binary form) by third-party operating systems like OpenBSD, as well as receiving no documentation to write the necessary drivers for the operating system.[48][49] De Raadt has pointed out that the OpenBSD project requires no firmware source code, and no low-level documentation to work on firmware, only requiring the binary distribution rights and documentation to interface with the said binary firmware that runs outside of the main CPU, a quite simple request that is generally honoured by many other wireless device vendors like Ralink.[50] Stallman fully agreed with de Raadt's request to open up the documentation,[47][not in citation given] since Stallman is known to hold an even stronger and more idealistic position in regards to the proprietary components, and requires that even the firmware that runs outside of the main CPU must be provided in its source code form, something de Raadt does not require. De Raadt later has had to point out that such more idealistic and less realistic position has instead been misattributed to OpenBSD's more practical approach to make it look unreasonable, and stood on record that OpenBSD's position is much easier to satisfy, yet it nonetheless remained unresolved.[48]

OLPC's dedication to "Free and open source" was questioned with their May 15, 2008, announcement that large-scale purchasers would be offered the choice to add an extra cost, special version of the proprietary Windows XP OS developed by Microsoft alongside the regular, free and open Linux-based operating system with the SugarLabs "Sugar OS" GUI. Microsoft developed a modified version of Windows XP and announced in May 2008 that Windows XP will be available for an additional cost of 10 dollars per laptop.[51] James Utzschneider, from Microsoft, said that initially only one operating system could be chosen.[52][53] OLPC, however, said that future OLPC work would enable XO-1 laptops to dual boot either the free and open Linux/Sugar OS or the proprietary Microsoft Windows XP. Negroponte further said that "OLPC will sell Linux-only and dual-boot, and will not sell Windows-only [XO-1 laptops]". OLPC released the first test firmware enabling XO-1 dual-boot on July 3, 2008.[52][54][55][56][57] This option did not prove popular. As of 2011, a few pilots had received a few thousand total dual-boot machines, and the new ARM-based machines do not support Windows XP. No significant deployment purchased Windows licenses.[58] Negroponte stated that the dispute had "become a distraction" for the project, and that its end goal was enabling children to learn, while constructionism and the open source ethos was more of a means to that end.[12]Charles Kane concurred, stating that anything which detracted from the ultimate goal of widespread distribution and use was counterproductive.[12]

The organization has been criticized for its lack of troubleshooting support. Teachers in Peru are told to handle problems in one of two ways. If the problem is a software issue, they are to flash the computer, and if it is a hardware problem, they are to report it. In the classroom environment this black-boxing approach is being criticized for causing the teachers and students to feel disconnected with, and confused by the laptop, which results, in many cases, in the laptops eventually going unused.[59] Several defects in OLPC XO-1 hardware have emerged in the field, and laptop repair is often neglected by students or their families (who are responsible for maintenance) due to the relatively high cost of some components (such as displays).[19]

On the software side, the Bitfrost security system has been known to deactivate improperly, rendering the laptop unusable until it is unlocked by support technicians with the proper keys. (This is a time-consuming process, and the problem often affects large numbers of laptops at the same time). The Sugar interface has been difficult for teachers to learn, and the mesh networking feature in the OLPC XO-1 was buggy and went mostly unused in the field.[19]

The OLPC XO-1 hardware lacks connectivity to external monitors or projectors, and teachers are not provided with software for remote assessment. As a result, students are unable to present their work to the whole class, and teachers must also assess students' work from the individual laptops. Teachers often find it difficult to use the keyboard and screen, which were designed with student use in mind.[19]

In 2005 and prior to the final design of the XO-1 hardware, OLPC received criticism because of concerns over the environmental and health impacts of hazardous materials found in most computers.[60] The OLPC asserted that it aimed to use as many environmentally friendly materials as it could; that the laptop and all OLPC-supplied accessories would be fully compliant with the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS); and that the laptop would use an order of magnitude less power than the typical consumer netbooks available as of 2007 thus minimizing the environmental burden of power generation.[61]

The XO-1 delivered (starting in 2007) uses environmental friendly materials, complies with the EU's RoHS and uses between 0.25 and 6.5 watts[62] in operation.
According to the Green Electronics Council's Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, whose sole purpose is assessing and measuring the impact laptops have on the environment, the XO is not only non-toxic and fully recyclable, but it lasts longer, costs less, and is more energy efficient. The XO-1 is the first laptop to have been awarded an EPEAT Gold level rating.[63][64]

Other discussions question whether OLPC laptops should be designed to promote anonymity or to facilitate government tracking of stolen laptops. A June 2008 New Scientist article critiqued Bitfrost's P_THEFT security option, which allows each laptop to be configured to transmit an individualized, non-repudiable digital signature to a central server at most once each day to remain functioning.[65]

The laptops are sold to governments,[66] to be distributed through the ministries of education with the goal of distributing "one laptop per child". The laptops are given to students, similar to school uniforms and ultimately remain the property of the child. The operating system and software is localized to the languages of the participating countries.

OLPC now also works directly with program sponsors from the public and private sectors to implement its educational program in entire schools and communities. As a non-profit organization, OLPC does require a source of funding for its program so that the laptops are given to students at no cost to child or to his/her family.

Approximately 500 developer boards (Alpha-1) were distributed in mid-2006; 875 working prototypes (Beta 1) were delivered in late 2006; 2400 Beta-2 machines were distributed at the end of February 2007;[67] full-scale production started November 6, 2007.[68] Around one million units were manufactured in 2008.

OLPC initially stated that no consumer version of the XO laptop was planned.[69] The project, however, later established the laptopgiving.org website to accept direct donations and ran a "Give 1 Get 1" (G1G1) offer starting on November 12, 2007. The offer was initially scheduled to run for only two weeks, but was extended until December 31, 2007 to meet demand. With a donation of $399 (plus US$25 shipping cost) to the OLPC "Give 1 Get 1" program, donors received an XO-1 laptop of their own and OLPC sent another on their behalf to a child in a developing country. Shipments of "Get 1" laptops sent to donors were restricted to addresses within the United States, its territories, and Canada.

Some 83,500 people participated in the program. Delivery of all of the G1G1 laptops was completed by April 19, 2008.[70] Delays were blamed on order fulfillment and shipment issues both within OLPC and with the outside contractors hired to manage those aspects of the G1G1 program.[71]

OLE Nepal, One Laptop Per Child image from Nepal

Between November 17 and December 31, 2008, a second G1G1 program[72] was run through Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.[73] This partnership was chosen specifically to solve the distribution issues of the G1G1 2007 program. The price to consumers was the same as in 2007, at US$399.

The program aimed to be available worldwide. Laptops could be delivered in the US, in Canada and in more than 30 European countries, as well as in some Central and South American countries (Colombia, Haiti, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay), African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Madagascar, Rwanda) and Asian countries (Afghanistan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nepal).[74] Despite this, the program sold only about 12,500 laptops and generated a mere $2.5 million, a 93 percent decline from the year before.[75]

In October 2007, Uruguay placed an order for 100,000 laptops, making Uruguay the first country to purchase a full order of laptops. The first real, non-pilot deployment of the OLPC technology happened in Uruguay in December 2007.[79] Since then, 200,000 more laptops have been ordered to cover all public school children between 6 and 12 years old.

President Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay presented the final laptop at a school in Montevideo on October 13, 2009.[80] Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved, and has cost the state $260 (£159) per child, including maintenance costs, equipment repairs, training for the teachers and internet connection.[81] The annual cost of maintaining the programme, including an information portal for pupils and teachers, will be US$21 (£13) per child.[81]

The country reportedly became the first in the world where every primary school child received a free laptop on October 13, 2009 as part of the Plan Ceibal (Education Connect).[81][82]

Unfortunately, even though roughly 35% of all OLPC computers went to Uruguay, a 2013 study by the Economics Institute (University of the Republic, Uruguay) of the Ceibal plan concluded that use of the laptops did not improve literacy and that the use of the laptops was mostly recreational, with only 4.1% of the laptops being used "all" or "most" days in 2012. The main conclusion was that the results showed no impact of the OLPC program on the test scores in reading and math.[83]

Originally, OLPC announced the United States would not be part of the first-year effort. In 2008, Nicholas Negroponte said "OLPC America already has a director and a chairman and will likely be based in Washington, D.C.,"[84] however such an organization was not set up. As of 2010, Birmingham, Alabama is the largest deployment in the US. Some said the changing economic landscape forced OLPC to adjust their distribution strategy. Negroponte cited patriotism, "building critical mass", and providing a means for children all over the world to communicate.

On January 26, 2012, prime minister Ara Harutyunyan and entrepreneur Eduardo Eurnekian signed a memorandum of understanding launching an OLPC program in Artsakh. The program is geared towards elementary schools throughout Artsakh. Eurnekian hopes to decrease the gap by giving the war-zoned region an opportunity to engage in a more solid education. The New York-based nonprofit, Armenian General Benevolent Union, is helping to undertake the responsibility by providing on-the-ground support. The government of Artsakh is enthusiastic and is working with OLPC to bring the program to fruition.[85]

Lagos Analysis Corp., also called Lancor, a Lagos, US-based Nigerian-owned company, sued OLPC in the end of 2007 for $20 million, claiming that the computer's keyboard design was stolen from a Lancor patented device.[86] OLPC responded by claiming that they had not sold any multi-lingual keyboards in the design claimed by Lancor,[87] and that Lancor had misrepresented and concealed material facts before the court.[88] In January 2008, the Nigerian Federal Court rejected OLPC motion to dismiss LANCOR's lawsuit and extended its injunction against OLPC distributing its XO Laptops in Nigeria. OLPC appealed the Court's decision, the Appeal is still pending in the Nigerian Federal Court of Appeals. In March 2008, OLPC filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts to stop LANCOR from suing it in the United States.[89] In October 2008, MIT News magazine erroneously reported that the Middlesex Superior Court granted OLPC’s motions to dismiss all of LANCOR’s claims against OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte, and Quanta.[90] On October 22, 2010 OLPC voluntarily moved the Massachusetts Court to dismiss its own lawsuit against LANCOR.

In 2007, XO laptops in Nigeria were reported to contain pornographic material belonging to children participating in the OLPC Program.[91] In response, OLPC Nigeria announced they would start equipping the machines with filters.[91][92]

India's Ministry of Human Resource Development, in June 2006, rejected the initiative, saying "it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents".[93][94] Later they stated plans to make laptops at $10 each for schoolchildren. Two designs submitted to the Ministry from a final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in May 2007 reportedly describe a laptop that could be produced for "$47 per laptop" for even small volumes.[95] The Ministry announced in July 2008 that the cost of their proposed "$10 laptop" would in fact be $100 by the time the laptop became available.[96] In 2010, a related $35 Sakshat Tablet was unveiled in India, released the next year as the "Aakash".[97][98] In 2011, each Aakash sold for approximately $44 by an Indian company, DataWind. DataWind plans to launch similar projects in Brazil, Egypt, Panama, Thailand and Turkey.[99]
OLPC later expressed support for the initiative.[100]

In 2009, a number of states announced plans to order OLPCs. However, as of 2010, only the state of Manipur had deployed 1000 laptops.

^Fildes, Jonathan (May 15, 2008). "'$100 laptop' embraces Windows XP". Microsoft has joined forces with the developers of the "$100 laptop" to make Windows available on the machines. BBC News. Retrieved May 15, 2008.

^Ina Fried (May 15, 2008). "Microsoft, OLPC officially team up". Retrieved December 7, 2008. Microsoft, meanwhile, said the first XO laptops with Windows that start rolling out in June will not be dual-boot machines.

1.
Florida
–
Florida /ˈflɒrᵻdə/ is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U. S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States, the Miami metropolitan area is Floridas most populous urban area. The city of Tallahassee is the state capital, much of the state is at or near sea level and is characterized by sedimentary soil. The climate varies from subtropical in the north to tropical in the south, the American alligator, American crocodile, Florida panther, and manatee can be found in the Everglades National Park. It was a location of the Seminole Wars against the Native Americans. Today, Florida is distinctive for its large Cuban expatriate community and high population growth, the states economy relies mainly on tourism, agriculture, and transportation, which developed in the late 19th century. Florida is also renowned for amusement parks, orange crops, the Kennedy Space Center, Florida has attracted many writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, and continues to attract celebrities and athletes. It is internationally known for golf, tennis, auto racing, by the 16th century, the earliest time for which there is a historical record, major Native American groups included the Apalachee, the Timucua, the Ais, the Tocobaga, the Calusa and the Tequesta. Florida was the first part of the continental United States to be visited and settled by Europeans, the earliest known European explorers came with the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León. Ponce de León spotted and landed on the peninsula on April 2,1513 and he named the region La Florida. The story that he was searching for the Fountain of Youth is a myth, in May 1539, Conquistador Hernando de Soto skirted the coast of Florida, searching for a deep harbor to land. He described seeing a wall of red mangroves spread mile after mile, some reaching as high as 70 feet. Very soon, many smokes appeared along the whole coast, billowing against the sky, the Spanish introduced Christianity, cattle, horses, sheep, the Spanish language, and more to Florida. Both the Spanish and French established settlements in Florida, with varying degrees of success, in 1559, Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano established a settlement at present-day Pensacola, making it the first attempted settlement in Florida, but it was abandoned by 1561. Spain maintained tenuous control over the region by converting the tribes to Christianity. The area of Spanish Florida diminished with the establishment of English settlements to the north, the English attacked St. Augustine, burning the city and its cathedral to the ground several times. Florida attracted numerous Africans and African-Americans from adjacent British colonies who sought freedom from slavery, in 1738, Governor Manuel de Montiano established Fort Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose near St

2.
United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci

3.
OLPC XO
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The XO was developed by Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MITs Media Lab, and designed by Yves Behars Fusebox company. The laptop is manufactured by Quanta Computer and developed by One Laptop per Child, the subnotebooks are designed for sale to government-education systems which then give each primary school child their own laptop. Pricing was set to start at $188 in 2006, with a goal to reach the $100 mark in 2008. When offered for sale in the Give One Get One campaigns of Q42006 and Q42007 and these rugged, low-power computers use flash memory instead of a hard drive, and come with an operating system derived from Fedora Linux as their pre-installed operating system with the Sugar GUI. The latest version of the OLPC XO is the XO-4 Touch, the device shown was a rough prototype using a standard development board. Negroponte estimated that the screen alone required three months of development. The first working prototype was demonstrated at the projects Country Task Force Meeting on May 23,2006, in 2006 there was a major controversy because Microsoft had suddenly developed an interest in the XO project and wanted the formerly open source effort to run Windows. Negroponte agreed to provide assistance to Microsoft to facilitate their efforts. During this time, the mission statement changed to remove mentions of open source. A number of developers, such as Ivan Krstić and Walter Bender, Quanta Computer, the projects contract manufacturer, said in February 2007 that it had confirmed orders for one million units. Quanta plans to offer very similar to the XO-1 on the open market. The One Laptop Per Child project originally stated that a version of the XO laptop was not planned. The project later established, in 2007 the laptopgiving. org website for outright donations, for each computer purchased at a cost of $399, an XO is also sent to a child in a developing nation. OLPC again restarted the G1G1 program through Amazon. com in November 2008, on May 20,2008, OLPC announced the next generation of XO, OLPC XO-2 which was thereafter cancelled in favor of the tablet-like designed XO-3. In late 2008, the NYC Department of Education began a project to purchase large numbers of XO computers for use by New York schoolchildren, the design received the Community category award of the 2007 Index, Award. The XO-1 is designed to be low-cost, small, durable and it is shipped with a slimmed-down version of Fedora Linux and a GUI named Sugar that is intended to help young children collaborate. The XO-1 includes a camera, a microphone, long-range Wi-Fi. In addition to a standard plug-in power supply, human power and solar sources are available

4.
Laptop
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Laptops are folded shut for transportation, and thus are suitable for mobile use. Although originally there was a distinction between laptops and notebooks, the former being bigger and heavier than the latter, as of 2014, there is often no longer any difference. Laptops are commonly used in a variety of settings, such as at work, in education, Internet surfing using sites such as YouTube and for personal multimedia, most 2016-era laptops also have integrated webcams and built-in microphones. Laptops can be powered either from a battery or by an external power supply from an AC adapter. Hardware specifications, such as the speed and memory capacity. Design elements, form factor, and construction can also vary significantly between models depending on intended use, as portable computers evolved into the modern laptop, they became widely used for a variety of purposes. The terms laptop and notebook are used interchangeably to describe a computer in English. Regardless of the etymology, by the late 1990s, the terms were interchangeable, as the personal computer became feasible in 1971, the idea of a portable personal computer soon followed. A personal, portable information manipulator was imagined by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC in 1968, the IBM Special Computer APL Machine Portable was demonstrated in 1973. This prototype was based on the IBM PALM processor, the IBM5100, the first commercially available portable computer, appeared in September 1975, and was based on the SCAMP prototype. As 8-bit CPU machines became widely accepted, the number of portables increased rapidly, the Osborne 1, released in 1981, used the Zilog Z80 and weighed 23.6 pounds. It had no battery, a 5 in CRT screen, in the same year the first laptop-sized portable computer, the Epson HX-20, was announced. The Epson had an LCD screen, a battery. Both Tandy/RadioShack and HP also produced portable computers of varying designs during this period, the first laptops using the flip form factor appeared in the early 1980s. The Dulmont Magnum was released in Australia in 1981–82, but was not marketed internationally until 1984–85, the US$8,150 GRiD Compass 1101, released in 1982, was used at NASA and by the military, among others. The Sharp PC-5000, Ampere and Gavilan SC released in 1983, the Gavilan SC was the first computer described as a laptop by its manufacturer, while the Ampere had a modern clamshell design. The Toshiba T1100 won acceptance not only among PC experts but the market as a way to have PC portability. From 1983 onward, several new techniques were developed and included in laptops, including the touchpad, the pointing stick

5.
EBay
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EBay Inc. is a multinational e-commerce corporation, facilitating online consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales. It is headquartered in San Jose, California, eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, and became a notable success story of the dot-com bubble. Today it is a business with operations in about 30 countries. The company manages eBay. com, an auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods. It previously offered online money transfers, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay from 2002 until 2015, the website is free to use for buyers, but sellers are charged fees for listing items and again when those items are sold. The AuctionWeb was founded in California on September 3,1995 by French-born Iranian-American computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as part of a personal site. One of the first items sold on AuctionWeb was a laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained, Im a collector of broken laser pointers and this was revealed in Adam Cohens book, The Perfect Store, and confirmed by eBay. Reportedly, eBay was simply a hobby for Omidyar until his Internet service provider informed him he would need to upgrade to a business account due to the high volume of traffic to his website. The resulting price increase forced him to start charging those who used eBay and it resulted in the hiring of Chris Agarpao as eBays first employee to handle the number of checks coming in for fees. Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in early 1996, growth was phenomenal, in January 1997 the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions, compared with 250,000 during the whole of 1996. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997, originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyars consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay. com, but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, in 1997, the company received $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. Meg Whitman was hired as eBay President and CEO in March 1998, at the time, the company had 30 employees, half a million users and revenues of $4.7 million in the United States. EBay went public on September 21,1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires, eBays target share price of $18 was all but ignored as the price went to $53.50 on the first day of trading. As the company expanded product categories beyond collectibles into almost any saleable item, in February 2002, the company purchased iBazar, a similar European auction web site founded in 1998, and then bought PayPal on October 3,2002. By early 2008, the company had expanded worldwide, counted hundreds of millions of registered users,15, after nearly ten years at eBay, Whitman decided to enter politics

6.
Google
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Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph. D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and they incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4,1998. An initial public offering took place on August 19,2004, in August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabets leading subsidiary, will continue to be the company for Alphabets Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Googles core search engine. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, the new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated, a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier, alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google. com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube, Googles mission statement, from the outset, was to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful, and its unofficial slogan was Dont be evil. In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase Do the right thing, Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. They called this new technology PageRank, it determined a websites relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine BackRub, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Originally, Google ran under Stanford Universitys website, with the domains google. stanford. edu, the domain name for Google was registered on September 15,1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4,1998. It was based in the garage of a friend in Menlo Park, craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. At least three other investors invested in 1998, Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos, Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton. Author Ken Auletta claims that each invested $250,000, early in 1999, Brin and Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million, vinod Khosla, one of Excites venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it. Googles initial public offering took place five years later, on August 19,2004, at that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024

7.
Nortel
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It was founded in Montreal, Quebec in 1895 as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company. At its height, Nortel accounted for more than a third of the valuation of all the companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Nortel had filed for protection from its creditors in the United States, Canada, in June 2009, the company announced it would cease operations and sell off all of its business units. The period of protection was extended to February 2,2013. As part of the proceedings in the United States, Nortel Networks Inc. publishes monthly operating reports outlining cash receipts and disbursements. By 2016 Nortel had sold billions of dollars worth of assets and he later refined its design at Brantford after producing his first working prototype in Boston. In addition to phones, four years later, the department started manufacturing its first switchboard, the small manufacturing department expanded yearly with the growth and popularity of the telephone to 50 employees in 1888. By 1890 it had transformed into its own branch of operations with 200 employees. As the manufacturing branch expanded, its production ability increased beyond the demand for phones and this was a problem because the Bell Telephone Company of Canadas charter would not allow them to build other products. This company was incorporated as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company Limited, Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company Limited was incorporated on 7 December 1895, by the following corporate members, Charles Fleetford Sise Sr. McFarlane, manager, all of the city and district of Montreal, the initial stock capital was $50,000 at $100 per share, with 93 percent held by the Bell Telephone Company of Canada and the remainder held by the seven corporate members above. The first general meeting was held on March 24,1896. In December 1899, The Bell Telephone Company of Canada bought a company for $500,000. Northern Electric and Manufacturing further expanded its line in 1900. In 1911 the Wire and Cable company changed its name to the Imperial Wire, the construction of a new manufacturing plant started in 1913 at Shearer Street in Montreal, Canada, as preparations began for the two manufacturing companies integration. This facility at Shearer Street was the manufacturing centre until the mid-1950s. Edward Fleetford Sise was the president and his brother Paul Fleetford Sise was the vice-president, during the First World War Northern Electric manufactured the Portable Commutator, a one-wire telegraphic switchboard for military operations in the field. In 1922, Northern started to produce, for $5, the Peanut vacuum tube, the use of alternating current was still under development during this time

8.
Asus Eee PC
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The Asus Eee PC is a netbook computer line from ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated, and a part of the Asus Eee product family. At the time of its introduction in late 2007, it was noted for its combination of a lightweight, Linux-based operating system, solid-state drive, newer models added the options of Microsoft Windows operating system, rotating media hard disk drives and initially retailed for up to 500 euros. The first Eee PC was a milestone in the computer business, launching the netbook category of small. According to Asus, the name Eee derives from the three Es, an abbreviation of its slogan for the device, Easy to learn, Easy to work. In January 2013, Asus officially ended production of their Eee PC series, citing declining sales due to consumers favoring tablets, however, they subsequently restarted the line with the release of the EeeBook series in 2015. Asus announced two Eee PC models at Computex Taipei 2007, the 701 and the 1001, the 701 base model Eee PC 4G was released on October 16,2007 in Taiwan. Both the price and the size of the device are small in comparison with similar Ultra-Mobile PCs, the Eee series is a response to the XO-1 notebook from the One Laptop per Child initiative. At the Intel Developer Forum 2007, Asus demonstrated the Classmate PC and the Eee PC, and listed specifications for four models of the Eee PC. In some countries, the products have the marketing names EeePC 8G, 4G, 4G Surf, the 4G Surf uses socketed RAM but some revisions do not have a door to access the slot. Asus released a version of the Eee PC with Microsoft Windows XP pre-installed in January 2008, in Japan, the version is known as the 4G-X. Some users of the 701 physically modified the machine to replace the 4 GB solid state drive, the 8 GB versions of the 700 series leave the SSD area on the motherboard empty and connect their SSD as an internal PCI Express Mini Card. Replacing the SSD requires only an SSD compatible with the connector, the SSD area on the motherboard may also be used to install other devices, or accommodate physically larger SSDs, or even to hard-solder an SSD salvaged from a 2 GB or 4 GB700 model. As this requires only soldering on a new device without removing an old one, the Eee 900 series was launched in Hong Kong on April 16,2008, and in the UK on May 1,2008 for £329. It was launched in the US on May 12,2008, the Eee 900 series dimensions are a little larger than the 70x models–measuring 225 ×165 ×35 mm and weighing around 1 kg. The machine has a multi-touch trackpad allowing two-finger scroll and zoom via a pinch gesture, the Intel Atom version is named the EeePC 900a and comes with an 8GB or 16 GB SSD. Some of these Eee PCs also have a 4 GB SSD installed similarly to that in the 701 for a storage space of 20GB. Those that do not are named the Asus EEE900 16G, the MS Windows XP version is named the EeePC900 Win and also comes in two versions, one with a total storage of 12 GB and one with 16 GB. The Linux 20G version is sold for the price as the MS Windows 12G version

9.
Chromebook
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A Chromebook is a laptop running the Linux-based Chrome OS as its operating system. The devices were designed to be used primarily while connected to the Internet, with most applications. The original Chromebook was an example of a thin client, the first Chromebooks for sale, by Acer Inc. and Samsung, began shipping on June 15,2011. In addition to models, a desktop version, called a Chromebox, was introduced in May 2012. Chromebooks are primarily sold directly from Google and from the companys retail partners. By 2012, schools had become the largest category of customer and that October, Google broadened its marketing strategy to include first-time computer users and households seeking an additional computer. In October 2012, Simon Phipps, writing in InfoWorld, said, from January to November 2013,1.76 million Chromebooks were sold in US business-to-business channels. ABI Research have shown them most popular in the US K–12 education market, at Google I/O2016, it was announced that Android applications would be available to run on supported Chromebooks, via the Google Play Store, that will result in having two app stores in Chrome OS. The first Chromebooks for sale, by Acer Inc. and Samsung, were announced at the Google I/O conference in May 2011, Lenovo, Hewlett Packard and Google itself entered the market in early 2013. In December 2013, Samsung launched a Samsung Chromebook specifically for the Indian market that employed the companys Exynos 5 Dual core processor. In addition to models, a desktop version, called a Chromebox, was introduced in May 2012. The all-in-one is named the Chromebase and that complaint dissipated later in reviews of machines from Acer and Samsung that were priced lower. In February 2013, Google announced and began shipping the Chromebook Pixel, the Pixel C is based on Android. Initial hardware partners for Chromebook development included Acer, Adobe, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Intel, Samsung, and Dell. Chromebooks ship with Google Chrome OS, a system that uses the Linux kernel. Enabling developer mode allows the installation of Linux distributions on Chromebooks, crouton is a script that allows the installation of Linux distributions from Chrome OS, and running both operating systems simultaneously. Some Chromebooks include SeaBIOS, which can be turned on to install, with limited offline capability and a fast boot-time, Chromebooks are primarily designed for use while connected to the Internet. Instead of installing traditional applications such as processing and instant messaging

10.
World Economic Forum
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The World Economic Forum is a Swiss nonprofit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva. The Forum is best known for its meeting at the end of January in Davos. The meeting brings together some 2,500 top business leaders, international leaders, economists. Often this location alone is used to identify meetings, participation, and participants with such phrases as, a Davos panel, beside meetings, the foundation produces a series of research reports and engages its members in sector specific initiatives. The forum was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a German-born business professor at the University of Geneva and he then founded the WEF as a nonprofit organization based in Geneva and drew European business leaders to Davos for the annual meetings each January. Political leaders soon began to use the meeting as a neutral platform. The Davos Declaration was signed in 1988 by Greece and Turkey, in 1992, South African President F. W. de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the annual meeting, their first joint appearance outside South Africa. At the 1994 annual meeting, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat reached an agreement on Gaza. In late 2015, the invitation was extended to include a North Korean delegation for the 2016 forum, in view of positive signs coming out of the country, North Korea has not been attending the WEF since 1998. In 2017, the World Economic Forum in Davos attracted considerable attention when for the first time and he sharply rebuked the current populist movements that would introduce tariffs and hinder global commerce, warning that such protectionism could foster isolation and reduced economic opportunity. Headquartered in Cologny, the forum also has offices in New York, Beijing, on October 10,2016, the Forum announced the opening of its new Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco. The World Economic Forum strives to be impartial and is not tied to any political, partisan, the foundation is committed to improving the State of the World. Until 2012, it had observer status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the foundations highest governance body is the foundation board. During its annual meeting, more than 2,500 participants from slightly fewer than 100 countries gather in Davos, approximately 1,500 are business leaders, drawn from its members,1,000 of the worlds top companies. The foundation is funded by its 1,000 member companies and these enterprises rank among the top companies within their industry and/or country and play a leading role in shaping the future of their industry and/or region. Membership is stratified by the level of engagement with forum activities, with the level of membership fees increasing as participation in meetings, projects, and initiatives rises. As of 2011, an annual membership costs $52,000 for a member, $263,000 for Industry Partner. An admission fee costs $19,000 per person, in 2014, WEF raised annual fees by 20 percent, making the cost for Strategic Partner from SFr500,000 to SFr600,000